The Book Of Hours Of Mary Of Burgundy

The purpose of these boundaries was not only to separate the temporal world from the divine, but also to facilitate a specific response from the viewer. The devotional triptych was meant to establish a mode of communication that is well illustrated in a miniature from the Hours of Mary of Burgundy, (fig. 1). This book of hours was completed c. 1477 by an unknown artist for Mary of Burgundy, the only child of Charles the Bold. The miniature shows the owner of the book, Mary of Burgundy, attired in a yellow-brown gown, seated with a dog and a book of hours in her lap. She sits next to an open window that shows the interior of a church. In the center of the church is the Virgin dressed in blue and holding the Christ child in front of an altar.

This identification of Mary of Burgundy is supported by the juxtaposition of the foreground Mary to the one in the church interior. The miniature presents a type of communication that is achieved by individuals, who are engaged in a meditative state. Either a devotional book or painting could be used to help them reach this state. In this meditative state, the individual would imagine themselves before the sacred figure. This is illustrated in the Hours of Mary Burgundy, where the ‘real’ Mary of Burgundy is reading the book in the foreground frame; the book of hours presumably enables her to achieve a meditative state shown through the window. The window-frame was used to make a transition from the foreground to the background and more importantly, work as a representation of a mode of communication with the divine. Framing plays a similar role in the triptychs we will examine in this